


The Alignment

by initialism



Category: Original Work
Genre: Accepting a Soulbond to Save the World, Dubious Consent, F/M, Femdom, Rituals, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tentacle Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 14:41:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11164005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/initialism/pseuds/initialism
Summary: A young woman finds that the consequences of the fateful choice she has made are not quite what she expected.





	The Alignment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AFTanith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AFTanith/gifts).



> (The dubcon tag is because touching soulmarks for the first time basically works like sex pollen.)

Irene stood at the entrance to the chamber, hearing the chanting coming from inside, smelling the acrid smoke from the unholy flame.

She looked down at her blank wrist, the pattern of the veins underneath as they bulged rhythmically with her quickened pulse. Even though she was completely naked, in preparation for the ritual, it was still that part of her that felt most bare. Suddenly she remembered how, as a teenager, if she was going somewhere people didn't know her, she would draw over that same pattern of veins heavily in ink, or if she had the time do it as a henna tattoo. Everyone always glanced at everyone else's wrists, eager to see if they had finally met their soulmate. Moving on from having patterns that didn't match was natural, easy; dealing with people's curiosity or, worse, pity, at having met an Unmarked was much worse. Even though the trait was dominant, genetically, the fact that so many children came about as the result of soulmate unions meant that it was extremely rare in the population; there were less than 0.0001% like herself. At times, she'd thought of it as being soulmates with herself.

Now, though, everything was going to change. Everything.

* * *

Her earliest memory was of the first time she'd asked her mother about the marks. She'd been three, sitting on the bed after listening to her bedtime story. "What are those things everyone has on their ..." She waved her hand around in front of her mother's face, not knowing the word.

"That's called your wrist, darling. And look, not _everyone_ has one." She held out her own wrists for Irene to inspect, just as plain as Irene's own.

"But ... what are they?"

"They're called soulmarks, sweetheart."

"Why don't I have one?"

Her mother had hugged her tight. In the memory, now, she thought mother was trying very hard not to cry, but maybe that was a detail she'd invented later; surely three-year-old Irene wouldn't have picked up on that nuance. "That's because you're very special, darling."

"Oh, OK." When her mother let her go again, she'd asked, "Are you special, too?"

* * *

When she looked up, the attendant was looking at her just as earnestly as her mother had then. "Are you ready? The time approaches."

Irene thought she could feel the effects, but maybe that was only because she expected to feel something. What did the corruption of all reality feel like, anyway? "I'm as ready as I'll ever be."

"We honour you," the attendant said.

"Yeah, I've been hearing that a lot lately."

"There are so few who can do what you are doing."

Irene glanced, then, at the attendant's wrist. Her soulmark was an intricate pattern, like looping knotwork. She wondered if she had found her soulmate yet, and if so, whether they knew where she was right now.

* * *

She'd learned more, over the years. In her first years at school, everyone was endlessly fascinated, even if they didn't themselves really understand what the marks were for, and even though their parents were always telling them it was rude to go on about it. Irene didn't mind, back then; she knew she was special, and their interest just proved it.

As time wore on, and she realised what having a soulmate was all about, she'd realised that something was strange.

It was another bedtime conversation, this time with her father. "Can I ask you something?" Irene had said, as he'd been about to turn out the light.

"Of course, sweetheart."

There had been a long silence, before Irene eventually plucked up the courage to say, "You have a soulmark."

"That's not a question," he'd said. But then after a moment, he'd crossed over to sit on the bed, taken Irene's hands in his own, and said, "Yes. Yes, I do."

"So how did you end up with Mom?"

"I had a soulmate," he said. "But ... she died."

"Were you sad?"

A nod. "Very sad. I still am very sad, sometimes. And it's always there, a little bit of sadness. But ... life has to go on." He looked at her very intently. "Your mother and I are happy together, please don't think that we're not. And you make us happy. You make us so happy, my love." He'd hugged her, just like Mom had when she'd been three. "We're so proud of you, our special girl."

* * *

The attendant pulled the door open, smoke billowing out of the chamber. Irene coughed. The circle of thirteen swaying, chanting cultists ignored it, as they did everything else. They had to focus completely to avoid being driven mad by the way in which the chamber's geometry was becoming distorted. In the very centre, the small pedestal on which the Markstone was placed looked as though it was shimmering in a desert heat haze, the light coming from its glowing runes being distorted on its passage through twisted space.

Irene could already feel the effects on her. But she knew that it was her task not merely to brave the insanity, but to tame it.

* * *

It was the day after her eighteenth birthday when they'd finally told her the whole truth about why she was so special. She could tell they'd been arguing about it. Mom looked like she'd been crying, and Dad was clenching the arm of his chair as though it alone could protect him from being sucked out into the Outer Realms.

Which, it turned out, was actually a thing that could happen. There were other dimensions, unknowable to human senses, and hideous creatures that inhabited them -- or _were_ them, depending on how you looked at it -- and wanted nothing more than to take over this universe and turn it into another realm of their own. Or again, depending on perspective, feed on it, and incorporate it into their own body. Irene would have thought it was all an elaborate prank, if it wasn't for how deadly seriously they were both taking it. They had never, in fifteen years since she'd first asked, been anything other than straight with her when it came to her lack of a soulmark.

The good news was that the realms were usually separated from one another; it was only occasionally -- a few times each millennium, but not in any sort of predictable pattern -- that one of the dimensions aligned and its governing Beast could try to cross over. And, it turned out, humanity had a way of fighting back, after a fashion. Irene was more special than she'd ever known, not just a one-in-a-million Unmarked, but one of only a few people in the whole world who might be able to take on a Mark of the Beast. Mom and Dad were members of the Protectorate Eternal, a secret organisation -- Irene decided pretty quickly from their descriptions it was a full-blown cult -- committed to nothing less than saving the world. It turned out that a lot of the people Irene thought of as unofficial aunts and uncles were their fellow cult members. When the realms touched, and whichever Beast embodied that realm tried to cross through into this reality, a moment of weakness existed. A ritual could be used to bind the Beast to a human, if the human took on the Beast's soulmark. The Protectorate had ancient artefacts cast with the marks of each of the known Beasts, but not all Unmarked could take them on. The Protectorate now knew that there was a further mutation in the soulmark gene, much rarer, that was required, but for centuries had maintained the secret bloodlines. Mom, the grandmother Irene had never met, her great-grandfather, an unbroken chain stretching back centuries. Dad and Mom did love each other, even if they weren't soulmates, but it turned out that it was his loyalty to the cult that had made him remarry and have a child so quickly.

It had taken some time for Irene to fully process the implications. The first thing she managed to work out to ask was, "Is this why you made me take all those extra geometry classes?"

That had made them all laugh, defusing the tension somewhat. But they had discussed it long into the night.

"What if I don't want to?" she had asked at one point.

"That is your right, of course," her father had said, very seriously.

"And the odds are it will never happen in your lifetime," Mom put in.

"But if I don't ... the world ends?"

"There are a few others like us," her mother had said. "But the ritual must hold until the realms go out of alignment again, and that can take ... decades."

"And if the Beast's soulmate dies"--Irene had winced as she caught her father's pained expression--"they're free once more. So it needs to be someone young." She could remember clearly the way in which the other implications had started to unfold in her mind: the way her mother must once have learned this same truth about her possible fate, and then the fate that she had actually ended up with. "And even if it doesn't happen, it's my ... duty to pass on the genes, right? Like you did."

"Again, you don't have to," her father had said. "But ..."

"But if I don't, the world ends. It's all just a question of when."

* * *

As it had turned out, it had been only six years between that conversation and the visit from the Protectorate's augurs that had changed everything from an abstract potentiality to imminent reality. Another realm was moving into alignment with this universe -- work was still ongoing to determine exactly which realm, which Beast embodied it -- and they wanted to know if she was willing to be the sacrifice. Irene had spent her college years swinging wildly from hedonistic denial to earnestly preparing herself for the eventuality. She had surprised even herself when her reaction to the news being mere weary resignation.

And now, she found herself here, walking into the ritual chamber. The thirteen around her were strangers: Irene had insisted they should not be any of her family, or any of the "aunts and uncles" she had known growing up. Partly that was out of a residual sense of embarrassment, but mostly the desire to avoid them the pain of being at ground zero of the intrusion if things didn't go according to plan. The cultists were performing the ritual to try to restrain the beast's ability to enter this dimension, but it could only ever be a holding measure. It would be down to Irene and Irene alone to enact the ritual fully.

She stepped further forward, through the tangled geometries towards the pedestal. The Markstone of Zekenaripatheon was glowing red hot now, the soulmark -- more like a staccato sequence of runes than the usual sort of swirling patterns most people had. She had to struggle against all her instincts and defensive reflexes to reach forward to place her wrist against it.

As she did so, the space directly above the stone ripped open, and a questing fleshy tentacle shot out, trying to rip her hand away. As the chanting grew even louder, Irene grabbed hold of it with her other hand, determined not to have the ritual interrupted at this crucial moment.

She could feel her wrist burning, but she knew that what was happening was far more than a simple branding. Her fate, her destiny, was being tied to that of the Great Beast that even now was desperately trying to prevent that from happening. She just had to hold on for a few moments longer--

As the mark took hold, it felt as though a sun was burning within her, through her, its light pouring forth from every part of her, and then, nothing. Everything was still: the writhing torment of the space around her frozen, the note of the chant echoing around, the tentacle she gripped with her free hand suddenly still. The moment lasted an eternity, as reality rewrote itself.

And then, everything was happening again: the chant continued, but space-time had settled back into its normal configuration. But her hand was pulling downwards on the arm of a naked man who had apparently appeared in mid-air.

He crashed onto the ground, then stumbled to his feet.

"Who are _you_?" she asked. Had she somehow rescued someone from the other realm? No one had ever mentioned anything like that happening. His wrist had the same soulmark hers now did; had she rescued one of her predecessors from a terrible fate? Would she too end up in the Beast's realm when the alignment finally ended, decades from now?

But when he spoke, his voice was like the desperate scrabbling of a creature's claws against the metal walls of the maze it was trapped in. "I am the famine and the feast. I am that which lies beyond the edges of your universe, and within each tiniest point of it. I am--"

"Zekenaripatheon," Irene said. "But you look ... human," she added after a moment.

He roared inhumanly, his mouth stretching wide and revealing infinities within. "That is your doing," he said, in a voice of bitter complaint. "You have bound me to you, and so I appear as one of you. But this is merely the protusion into your realm of the infinite glory of Zekenaripatheon." When he said the name, it sounded as though there were nine billion other names being spoken at the same time, a palimpsest in sound.

"And a protrusion is all you will be now," Irene said. She pulled on his arm, dragging his wrist out into the light from the stone. It was still glowing, but more dully now. His mark matched it perfectly, just as hers did. It felt ... right, somehow, even amongst the horrifying implications.

"Your tiny body is weak and frail," Zekenaripatheon said as she continued to stare at the two marks. "There are so very many ways you can die, and then I will irrupt into this reality and subsume it within my own form. Everything you know will exist within me--"

"You've been bound like this before," Irene said. "They showed me the histories when they worked out it was you this time. A man in Mesopotamia, thousands of years ago." The man she'd thought he was, a few moments ago. "What makes you think I can't?"

"Even if you do, one day your Protectorate will fall. The bloodlines will die out. And I shall rule all. Believe me, it is better for your realm this way than if one of my brothers or sisters were to be the one to take over. I have always found you all ... amusing. I would probably simulate you from time to time, somewhere within my infinite mind."

"In eternal torment, no doubt," Irene said.

"Better that than to have had every moment of your history utterly erased by becoming part of the flesh of the Beast."

"Irrelevant," Irene said. "You are bound to me."

"Not fully," he said. "Not yet."

"No, you're right," Irene said. She turned to the cultists. "Leave us now." They didn't need to be told twice, shuffling out of the room away from the eldritch horror wearing a human face as fast as they could while still retaining some semblance of dignity.

Zekenaripatheon paced around the chamber, sizing her up. "I don't believe you have it in you," he said eventually.

Irene said, "I think that you know that I do. I think that's why you're saying all these things. You're trying to throw me off."

"Do it, then," he said, offering his wrist to her, seemingly willingly.

Cautiously, Irene put her brand new mark against his. She felt it tingle, and then burn from within. All her life, she had wondered what it would feel like, but nothing she could have imagined would have been anything like this, even if he had been a real human. It felt as though the whole world was opening up to her, that all her senses were heightened, that same sense of _rightness_ that she had felt earlier returning a hundredfold, but with an intense erotic charge: things would only really be right until she had him inside her. She pulled him closer in, then pushed him to the floor, straddling him. Instinctively, she reached down to kiss him, forgetting in the heat of the moment that his mouth had seemed a portal to his realm.

As soon as she locked her lips onto his, a tentacle emerged from his mouth, a smaller version of the one that had first tried to break through the breach and prevent her completing the ritual. She gasped in surprise, and that allowed it to work its way further into her mouth. She pulled herself upright, still forcing his hips down with her own. She wiped her mouth with her forearm and spat to one side, trying to get the taste of the appendage out of her mouth.

The tentacle retracted into nothingness so that he could speak again. "Admit it, you liked it."

"I got carried away," Irene said. "Heat of the moment." She pulled his wrist up to hers again and pressed their soulmarks together. This time, she forced herself to ignore the desperate desire to fuck him, and spoke the ritual words she had spent days doing nothing but rote-learning, until she could repeat the strange syllables of the arcane secret language of the Protectorate perfectly. Zekenaripatheon roared in rage as she completed the ritual. Finally she dropped his hand and it flopped back uselessly onto the ground, defeated. "There," she said. "Now not only are we bound together, but you are compelled to obey me." It seemed absurd, that a Beast could be quelled with just a few words of power, but the way that the tingling in her soulmark had subtly changed told her that it was true. She wondered if the ritual would work between humans as well; perhaps that was why it was one of the Protectorate's most closely guarded secrets. Even she had only been taught it when the Alignment had been nearly upon them.

There was a protocol now, one that the Protectorate had worked out in time immemorial: a very, very long list of instructions she was supposed to give Zekenaripatheon to prevent him from twisting any future command she might give him to his own advantage.

But the urge building within her was too great, and instead she mounted him. His cock felt hard and thick within her. As she slid up and down on top of it, she began to wonder that that could be the case: somehow she had expected it to be more like a stiffened tentacle. "How human is your body?" she asked.

"Not in the slightest," he said with an eerie laugh. "This is merely an outward form of my great flesh that is a universe entire unto itself."

She ground down on top of him. "And the ... tentacle? Is that part of your true form?"

"I have no one true form," Zekenaripatheon said. He roared. "I am the famine--"

Irene rolled her eyes. "You can skip that part."

"--and the feast--"

"I _order_ you to skip that part," Irene said, and he fell silent. She mused for a second. "I _order_ you to explain about the tentacles."

"I have no true form," he said. "Or I have every form. Both perspectives are equally valid. The form that I took on first emerging into your reality was determined by your expectations of what a Great Beast would look like, just as much as the form I wear now was determined by your having forced me to become your soulmate."

"And can your form change?"

"I have no true for--"

"The form of your protusion into this reality, then," Irene said.

"Of course," Zekenaripatheon said. "Anything you can imagine, I can be."

"Ohhh," Irene said. She closed her eyes, and thought hard about what she had imagined his cock would be like. And then it was: a tentacle growing out of his crotch, stretching within her. As he realised what had happened, Zekenaripatheon began to twist it around inside her, using it to stimulate her G-spot. "Fuck yes!" Irene said. "More!" He put his hands on her ass to pull her down further onto his tentacle-cock, but then before Irene even knew she was causing it his hands had turned into the tips of tentacles. One of them pressed against the entrance to her ass and then in one sudden movement was inside. She bent down to kiss him again, and this time took the tentacle that emerged from his mouth into hers gladly. The remaining tentacle-arm wrapped itself around one of her legs.

It was incredible, it was everything she had wanted since she'd first pressed her wrist against his, but it still wasn't enough. Pulling her mouth free again, she pushed down on his chest as the tentacle emerging from his mouth lengthened and slid down to stimulate her clit. Irene closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment: there were a series of small fleshy popping noises and when she opened her eyes again two new tentacles had grown from each of his shoulders. With these, he embraced her, wrapping two of them around her breasts in spiral patterns so that the very tips could flick backwards and forwards gently over her erect nipples. All the while, the tentacles inside her thrashed around, stimulating her further. When they pressed against each other through the narrow strip of flesh separating them, she felt as though she was about to explode. When he finally stopped doing that and returned to stimulating her G-spot, she did, her orgasm unlike any she had ever experienced before.

But still she wanted more; she didn't even notice now as his body changed, tentacles growing from all over it. It was getting larger too, filling the circle now around which the chanting cultists had knelt. When she opened her eyes again, Irene realised that there was little of the human shape left: he now looked as she must have subconsciously pictured him, a writhing, seething mass of tentacles surrounding a single unblinking, lidless eye. In this form, his soulmark was huge, stretching across his torso underneath his giant eyeball. She had ridden the monster that was the avatar of an entire sentient universe, this monster that was gloriously _hers_ , utterly and irrevocably, soulmate and slave both, to another two orgasms before she began to realise that something was wrong. The geometry of the room was starting to feel wrong again, not the gross intrusion of alien spacetime that had been occurring before she had bonded herself, but a more subtle, insidious process.

"Stop!" she shouted, and everything stopped: both the movement of his tentacles inside and around her, and the geometrical oddities.

A beaklike mouth emerged in the mass of tentacles. "You did say 'More'," Zekenaripatheon said. His razor-blade voice sounded as wrong coming out of this mouth as it had from his human one.

"I meant more stimulation, not more ... you." He had been trying to use the wiggle room of the unclear instruction to bring forth more of his body-that-was-a-universe into this one. "Return to your human form."

"You're going to do the full geas, aren't you?" he said once he had, lying underneath her once again, his cock still inside her.

"Of course I am," Irene said, even as she distracted herself from the protocol by sliding down his cock and grinding her clit against his hips. "Otherwise you're going to try to pull things like that at every opportunity."

"You didn't even order me not to harm you," he said. "I could have killed you then and there and feasted on this reality for eternity."

"But you didn't," Irene said. "How very sweet of you. But then, I am your soulmate after all."

"You have no conception of what a soulbond means to one such as Zekenaripatheon." Just as before, the name itself was a whisper in the ear in the middle of a roaring crowd, but now it was also the name of her soulmate, and so there was something almost sweet about the sound. "I could have kept you alive in a tiny pocket dimension to witness the destruction of everything you hold dear, everything you have ever known, and it would have been my way of cherishing you for all time. Literally."

"OK, well, yeah, that sort of thing is on the list on the protocol. Don't ever do that." Irene slid up and down his cock a couple more times. "But the fact remains that you didn't. I think maybe I wasn't the only one to get carried away by the soulbond."

"You might be right." He thrust upwards into her. "Or maybe I was just enjoying that form. I've never had tentacles before. Your imagination is very ... vivid."

Irene rolled her eyes, and began to recite the first of the many items from the geas protocol. "I bind you, Zekenaripatheon, not to harm--"

"Oh, very well, you win," Zekenaripatheon said. "Just one thing, though. Once you've finished giving me my marching orders, will you still let me do ... that, from time to time?"

"I won't just let you, I'll order you to," Irene said. "Within certain very tightly controlled limits, of course."

"Well, then, this might turn out not to be the worst few decades of my trillion year existence after all."


End file.
